Tomales News

OUR STATE'S budget crisis means yet more public services are being reduced. This time, it's our access to our state parks that has been reduced.

Our state leaders nowadays are masters at breaking something that works and ruining the average taxpayers' few moments of paradisea 'even in Marin! And what is the quickest way to turn heaven into hell as Bob Marley describes it: "You think you're in heaven, but you're liv'un in hell?" Close all the state park restrooms.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger decreed last month that no parks would be shuttered, but the $14.2 million he cut out of the state parks budget means many of the 278 parks in California will be open only on weekends and almost all will have to endure partial closures.

Local scientists guessed last spring that tumors found in Morro Bay goby fish were caused by sewage runoff.

In just a few days, parks across the state will reduce service and adopt other cost-saving measures in order to meet budget cuts.

Lowell Levinger, better known as Grandpa Banana and a band member of the Youngbloods of the 1960s, has lived in West Marin for more than four decades.

Green is the new black and anyone who's anyone knows that being energy-efficient and low-carbon will make you smarter, stronger, sexier and look years younger, with virtually no side effects.

Tomales Bay in western Marin County has been the source of fresh oysters for the Bay Area for generations, but lurking beneath these tides are opportunists bent on keeping native species from surviving.

Executive chef Scott Dammann talks with diners Colin Lafrenz , Jette Jarl and Cornelia Peuckert at the Farm House restaurant in Olema.

The Shoreline School District board will consider invoking a temporary spending cap and hiring freeze during a 6:30 p.m. meeting Thursday at Tomales Elementary School at 40 John St.

Victor Bjelajac, a park maintenance supervisor, surveys a tree stump cut years ago in Samuel P. Taylor park near Lagunitas.

For the first time, there will be an election for the Tomales Community Services District board.

Recycled redwood chicken house provides haven for a flock of laying hens. Hens turn grass into organic pastured eggs.

While often reinterpreted as "winegrower" in America, the French have a term for someone who is intimately hands-on in both tending vines and making wine: vigneron .

Mount Barnabe in Samuel P. Taylor State Park offers a unique perspective of Marin's valleys and ridges.

Kathryn Jane Vangilder and Kevin Michael Ballatore were married June 13, 2009, at Hanover Lutheran Church.

Three upcoming meetings may be of interest to aspiring and established writers: * Move really fast if you want to attend the sixth annual Tomales Bay Writers Workshops, Oct.

A few times a year a horde of felons who don't always play well together assemble in Tomales with the purpose of pushing the asphalt envelope, usually until something snaps or we get hungry.

The Marin Local Agency Formation Commission will meet at 7 p.m. Thursday to clarify boundaries of the Novato Fire Protection District in Hamilton.

For many, Labor Day means that symbolic last breath of summer. Most of us forget that the national day off work actually commemorates days at work.